Red
by Perdita Durango
Summary: This story sets in before the big battle in "Eclipse". There is a new character, Alex, who will be involved with Victoria's Seattle army. The battle will still be won by the Cullens and the wolves, but when Jane and Felix arrive, things will go differently... Story will be continued after received feedback. Based on characters and events written by Stepheny Meyer.
1. Chapter 1

Though I have been trained in both offensive and defensive combat skills, I did not see the danger coming. Nor had I any idea that I was attacked ow who the attacker was. There was only a swift movement, fast, much too fast, and the sudden, searing pain.

I burned for a long time, not knowing what was happening to me. Eventually, the pain receded, and to my surprise, my heart stopped beating. When I opened my eyes, I was still confused.

"My name is Riley. Welcome to your new life."

The guy was younger than me, obviously, but his skin was white and his eyes blazing red. He looked dangerous, and he was. Before he could continue talking to me, something caught his eyes. Very quickly – but my eyes were able to follow his movement – he got up and moved towards the source of his irritation. I watched when he broke up the fight between a girl and an older man, only that they had the same smooth, white skin; the red eyes and the strange way they moved.

I got on my feet and tried to get some orientation. There were more than a dozen of people in the building, a warehouse or something. I scanned the room, realizing that it was night outside; there was no light source in the building, but still I was able to recognize every detail. I was able to think several thoughts at the same time: Checking the room, bringing me in a strategic position in case I would be attacked, wondering about my perfect eyesight and realizing that something bad had happened to me and that obviously, I was in trouble. And that I was unbelievable thirsty, while there was a smell in the air that pulled me towards its source, promising relief to my painful burning throat.

The guy who introduced himself as Riley found me again.

"I know you are irritated, but everything will be ok. I glad that I found you, because I'm short on numbers and time is running out. There will be a fight soon, and I know that you are a fighter. I can give you what you want."

I answered nothing but followed him. That seemed to be the deal here: I cooperate and he will provide me with food and shelter.

"I'm no effing mercenary," I wanted to answer, but it hit me without warning.

We have stepped outside of the building. There was a van parked, and Riley opened the side door. I was lunging at the woman before I even saw her, I acted automatically, my body knew somehow what there was to do, and I had my teeth at her throat before she was able to scream. I drank her blood, and never had I drunk anything similar before. I drank until she was empty.

I woke from my frenzy when Riley moved behind me. I turned around to face him, going in a crouch, ready to attack. He smiled.

"Yes, you will be very useful. Don't worry; your new life will be better than everything you know. We are strong, and we don't die. However, we can still be killed, and there are some others out there who are going to kill us soon. But we will defend ourselves, we will make the first move, we will seek them out and destroy them before they have a chance to destroy us…"

He went on with his speech, but I was to wary to let him take my whole attention. I scanned the area like I had done with the building before. We were somewhere in the outskirts of the City, near the water. A crashed car was to the left of me, to the right the van with the now dead girl whose blood I drank.

Two pale spots caught my attention. They were standing about half a mile away, on the roof of another building, positioned in a way that they could watch us with their eyes just over the rim of the roof without the need to kneel or crouch. If I hadn't my training, if I haven't been to Afghanistan and Iraq, I wouldn't have noticed them. Suddenly, I knew that I wouldn't have noticed the two small faces before the pain. I didn't turn my head or showed any other sign that I had seen the two faces up there.

I just turned around and went back into the building, regardless of Riley, who was still explaining about what I was.

A vampire, he said.

Yes, that made sense, since I drained all the blood from the woman, killing her in that process. She was not the first person I had killed. Oddly, she was the first one I had a personal reason for: I had unbelievable thirsty, in fact, I was still thirsty, and her blood was able to quench my thirst.

Nothing had changed, then. I was still a harbinger of death. Even after I had left the fighting troops, when I left the military to join a private software company to write some code, in peace in front of the computer, not under the scorching sun or the freezing cold of some Asian deserts, but in an air-conditioned office in Seattle, I had not fulfilled to escape the killing, then the software was still used in drones, and I was still a killer.

The best of things are three, they say. Now I was employed to someone else, my manager was Riley, and I still was supposed to kill. Well, fuck Riley! He could have asked before, and whatever his crusade was, I had no interest in it.

The other vampires ignored me. I went into a corner to be separate from the steady stream of talking, shouting and bickering that was going on in the warehouse. There was a girl, maybe 15 or 16 years old.

"Hey, I'm Alex. Nice to meet you."

She looked at me, obviously not used to a friendly voice. She looked scared.

"I'm Bree," she told me.

"Looks like we have been conscripted to a war which is not ours to fight."

She looked at me.

"I'm not going to fight," I assured her, "and I can protect you if you want."

Her red eyes looked at me. There was a kind of relief in them. Riley was an idiot, so much had I found out for myself. He was obviously gathering an army of the undead, which he told me. He was going to lose the battle, because he was an idiot. I wondered what drove him.

I sat next to Bree, leaning the back to the wall like her, without feeling the need to do so.

"We can't sleep," she informed me.

"We drink blood, we have extremely good eyesight, we can literally hear the grass growing and we are obviously very strong," I summarized my knowledge. "We are thirsty for blood all the time, and if we smell it, we lose our heads."

"You got it right," she told me.

"I think we are pretty cool," I told her, to cheer her up. I needed someone to watch my back in this mayhem.

"We are mindless killers," she said.

"Four days ago I had a meeting in a fancy office downtown. Some extremely important people were there, generals of the army and the air force; engineers and executives. All we did was creating brand new ways to fight the enemy. The terrorists, you know. The bad ones. But I have been out there. The bad ones tend to hide behind the innocent, and the generals and the executives tend to ignore the innocent. Each shoot means something. It means happy generals and happy executives and dead children. Ten minutes ago I killed a human. It wasn't my first, but it was the first one I don't count against me. So, I'm a very mindful killer."

I smiled at her.

"I was a vegan, because I didn't want that animals had to suffer because of me," she stated.

"And now you drink human blood."

She looked sad.

"You were right," I reassured her. "Not wanting someone to suffer is always a good thing and a good base for your own actions. But humans are the only lifeform which is not in danger of extinction, and they hurt each other, the animals and the whole planet. I think I don't mind taking their blood."

Bree said nothing. I looked at her from the side. What I told her was to give her some other perspective than the gloomy atmosphere around us. I wanted to show her some light.

"By the way, what about the sun? Can we go outside during the day?" I asked her.

"Yes we can. But it's better when it's cloudy. In the sun, we glitter like disco balls"

"You are kidding me!"


	2. Chapter 2

We went to the west to fight. It was just three days ago that my life had changed so drastically, and it looked like I had been the last addition two Riley's army. There was a woman, a sexy redhead named Victoria. Didn't take me long to find out that she wanted to destroy a coven of vampires from nearby, claiming that they were the bad ones. The other idiots were to blood crazy and didn't think at all, they spend their days searching for prey, fighting each other and making Riley's job as an officer of a vampire army extremely difficult.

Before I met Riley and he bit me in my shoulder, I have noticed the news about the killing rampages plaguing the city, but of course I haven't been frightened at all, since my personal body count, all in all, would exceed that of the red-eyed army by far. The more I thought about it, the better I felt. Yes, I was a killer now, but like I said, I had been a killer before.

Killing for thirst, killing for survival was the way nature worked. The humans claim that their humanity, their civilization is something entirely different, but I knew too much to buy that bigotry. Bree on the other hand was terrified. She couldn't stand to be near a living human, because she couldn't fight her killing instincts. But I also have seen her catch rats and avoid going out much. Generally, we were all free to hunt. Riley even encouraged us to go far, to "dissipate the attention"; of course, he was oblivious to the fact that someone already caught his attention.

I wasn't sure if I could go amongst people, when I returned to the apartment block where I was staying for my time in the States. The building was kind of fancy, even with a concierge and an elevator that didn't house funny smells. Of course, I didn't take the main entrance, but I climbed up the wall, went through the window and packed up. I booked a flight back to Europe, since I already knew that the Seattle vampire population was much too high. I hadn't decided what to do with my new life yet, however, I didn't want to stay here.

Maybe Bree would want to go with me, and I was thinking how she would do in a plane full of people and decided that I rather should go alone, holding my breath for the long hours of the transatlantic flight.

I had tested my new body. My strength was immense, I crashed another vampire into a wall of reinforced concrete, with the effect that the wall crumbled in a big bang and parts of the inlay steel bars sprang away in all directions, leaving small dents wherever they touched another surface. So I could use another vampire as a hand grenade, which was very useful to know.

My other tricks and strategies I kept for myself. I felt that I could act with lightning speed, even for vampire standards. Bree stood there and watched me, and I saw a bit of hope in her eyes. Maybe she thought I was strong enough to protect her from what was coming.

Riley was babbling about special gifts the enemy clan had. They could read minds and predict the future; they were very experienced fighters, but that we had the numbers. Then, he showed us a red shirt, containing the scent of a human. That would be our beacon. Internally, I was a bit amused. When the Cullens really could predict the future, they would see us coming. They still had the advantage of surprise then, not we. It was clear that something different was behind hit, and Victoria was the real reason.

But Victoria kept away from the army, and she was nowhere in sight when we marched west. Bree and I followed the crowd. I could hear someone behind us, I was not sure if Bree could, too, but I was certain that it was Victoria following us. When she had her own plans, maybe it was better to follow her than to end up in the middle of a melee that was just a deception.

The group halted somewhere in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains of the Olympic peninsula. There were trees all around us, everything was green and moist. The group split up, now following two tracks of scent – not that I did care. I wanted to know what really was going on. But then I saw Bree following the first group. I stroke up to her, at the end of the first group.

Then the attack started, and I pulled her back into the trees. The Cullens were obviously vampires, too, but their eyes had a golden color, not the crimson of Victoria or the bright red of Bree's or mine. They did cut into the army of vampires like a hot knife in butter. I had seen enough to know they would win and pulled Bree deeper into the woods to check on the other group.

Nope! They were fighting against big wolves, horse sized wolves, nota bene. Those were tearing the vampires apart like puppies playing with chewing toys. Rather back to the Cullens.

So we hid in the bushes until the fight was over. There have been only six of them, but the eight or nine vampires they fought were already a pile of burning body parts. A man and a woman, both with those golden eyes scanned the vegetation around them. There was something happening on the other battlefield, but I didn't care. Bree was more or less hiding behind me. I was not sure whether we should make ourselves known or not. I took a step forward, when the two noticed us.

The man sprung towards us. I stepped out of the way, shoving Bree out of the streak of his attack, and shouted:

"Stop! We don't fight!"

The woman looked at us warily, but I was just standing there, no sign of any offensive. I held my palms up to the front.

The man grabbed Bree and held her strongly in his arms, while the woman did the same to me. I saw her come, and I could easily have fought her. I still would do so if they really meant harm, but that was something I still wanted to find out.

"You are really willing to surrender?", the man asked.

"That would mean we were really fighting in the first place. However, since we didn't join any army, nor did anyone fight like in an army, I consider the girl and me as non-belligerents. We didn't sign up for this action, and I really think that we were meant to be just cannon fodder."

The man watched us closely.

"My name is Carlisle, this is my wife, Esme. The rest of my family is out here. We have been attacked, but we survived. If you really want to surrender yourselves to us, I would feel a relief to spare your lives."

"We won't fight, and you outnumber us. Please tell us what is going on here."

"It's a vendetta," Carlisle stated, "we had to kill a vampire named James, because he was attacking a human. His mate, Victoria, now wanted her revenge. She was not after Edward, my son, but after Bella, his girlfriend. She was her target, and the creation of the newborn army was just a distraction to get to her."

So vampires had mates, and Carlisle spoke about his son. I glanced sideways to Bree. Vampires could exist next to each other, could keep each other company. We were able to love, even feel strongly about those we love, otherwise a vendetta wouldn't make any sense. What was hate other than love going wrong?

"I am really sorry to hear that. What about the wolves?"

"They are on our side. Shape shifters. They protect the humans, too."

"So you protect the humans. You even…"

Suddenly a very strong scent filled the wood. A human fragrance, of course, and it was so compelling that I really had to concentrate not to move. Beside my still locked up status, I was preparing to fight back if there was a need to do so. So I was in control and didn't fidget.

Bree on the other hand was out of it. Carlisle had to hold her strongly, he pinned her on the ground.

"Stop it!" I yelled to Bree, to let her snap out of it. "Don't breathe!"

The other Cullens were around us. I could see a breathtakingly beautiful blonde woman next to a big, dark-haired guy who looked intimidating. Next to him was a blonde man, and even not being big as his friend, he looked terrifying, since he was covered all over in scars. He must have fought many battles in his life, and I quickly understood why the Cullens had won the battle so swiftly.

There was a girl, too. A human girl! She was pale, had dark brown hair and brown eyes. Next to her stood vampire, much taller than she was, with bronze hair and those yellow golden eyes they had. There was a sixth Cullen, a female, but she was outside my range of vision, because Esme still held me tight, my hands pinned very safely behind my back.

Bree had calmed down, more or less. She was whining, wanting the human girl. I hold my breath, because her scent was so extremely appetizing. Venom gathered in my mouth and wanted to start a festival, while my throat felt dry and hot and reminded me that I was a vampire and supposed to drink blood.

It was hard to keep my focus up, but I wasn't really sure there was no danger, though it seemed that the Cullens were very different from all the vampires that I had known so far. However, it turned out that Edward, the tall one, had hidden the human girl away from the battle ground. Riley and Victoria went there. There was a fight, but Edward won.

"I wanted to go after Riley to find out what this is all about. Would have been helpful if I had been there to help to get rid of the two. I don't like to be expected to die in someone else's vendetta." I told him.

Edward's reaction was not entirely positive, as if he didn't want me to be near the girl. She was staring at Bree and me. I wondered what she was thinking, and why she was with seven vampires.

Suddenly, the girl behind me said: "They're here."

Esme let go of me – after a slight nod of Carlisle – while Bree was still in her position on the ground. Two figures moved into the scene.

I recognized them; I had seen them before, on that roof, watching the army.

Obviously, they were authority. The Cullens spoke to them with respect, but there was a great tension tangible in the air.

I listened to the conversation. Carlisle explained what happened, and that they had annihilated the danger and so, at the same time, cleaned the situation in Seattle.

The discussion went on, and suddenly, the smaller, female of the two cloak-wearing figures, spoke to Bree. When Bree was too intimidated to answer immediately, the blonde girl smiled viciously and seemed to concentrate. At the same time, Bree, screeched from pain.

The blonde was doing this!

I sprung at her, grabbing my fingers in her neck to get a sure hold. The big boy next to her moved, but I already had rolled sideways, out of the vector of his attack, and in the movement I had torn the head of the blonde girl from her body and thrown both party into the flames.

Edward stormed forward to attack the bigger boy, but he just threw the tall Cullen away and leaped for the human girl who was frozen in shock. The blonde male Cullen moved forward to protect her, when the smallest female of the Cullens screamed in horror.

The cloaked vampire shot a gust of flames towards the blonde, who was now burning, while his head somehow has been split up from the forehead to the chin. I could see everyone storming forward, while Esme was beside the human girl. Before anyone else had reached the cloaked vampire, I had him. I tore him apart, again that screeching sound, and threw him into the flames, all in one swift movement, without any effort. I was good at killing.

The sound was unbearable. The smallest of the Cullens wailed, the sound of a Banshee pierced the woods, and never ever have I heard more desperation in a cry.

Just then the sun came out from behind the clouds. I was irritated when my forearms began to glitter and sparkle.

This was becoming a real nightmare.


	3. Chapter 3

The flight to Europe was kind of tedious. Holding my breath for about 24 hours to get from Seattle to Rome was irritating, keeping away from any kind of sunrays a logistical challenge. Sitting in a plane, knowing what I left behind me and just a slight idea what I was going to find at my final destination, stretched my patience in an extremely uncomfortable way.

Alice, the smallest of the Cullens, had been a mess. Not only had she lost Jasper, the other half of her soul, the visions she had ran havoc on her mind. Edward, the mind reader with the human girlfriend, tried to explain to me how Alice's predictions worked and what she could see – and what not.

She had seen my attack just a billionth of a second before I started it. She had seen Felix, the tall blonde vampire in the dark cloak, going for Bella Swan, the human girl. She had seen Jasper die only fractions of a moment before it happened. She had seen everything twice, unable to act.

Carlisle, the head of the Cullen family, had promised to take care for Bree. I still felt responsible for her, and Carlisle reassured me, that my intent to protect her has been the right choice. He gave the blame to the two Voluturi, Jane and Felix, with both hadn't survived my resilience and my fighting skills. He explained the role they played in the immortal world of the bloodsucking fiends. I didn't buy it, since neither Jane nor Felix had acted in a noble or protective way. I told Carlisle what I thought: The Volturi were just bullies, they were just another coven, and the fact that they obviously were the oldest and most powerful was just sugarcoated with the sheriff star they showed around.

This was such a typical human thing to do, gather power and then use it until it crumbled away. In the vampire world, this power could be forged on an on, but I was extremely sure that the Voltori , in the end, were just playground bullies who also acted as hall monitors. No telling someone that bloodsuckers exist, and to act unsuspiciously. Gathering any force of red-eyed undead soldiers always would raise suspicion – how convenient for the Volturi to step in and break up the petty fights between all those greedy covens.

At least, Carlisle was with me when I told him that I had seen the two cloaked ones watching us without doing anything, already knowing that we had been created to decimate the Cullen numbers. That worked out, but I was on my way to Volterra to rectify my wavering, when I acted to quickly without knowing all the relevant facts.

Not that helping someone who is attacked by a bully was ever wrong, but at least I could have waited. Carlisle wouldn't give that to me, but I knew he was just being polite. He even offered to go to Volterra with me, but I was extremely sure that whatever was happening in Italy would not have anything to do with politeness.

Alice saw the Volturi coming for the Cullens, as soon as the news about what happened in the State of Washington would reach them. Not that she was coherent, but Edward could see the images in her head. I was going to Volterra to intercept them.

Ironically, I could remember my last visit to the small, medieval Tuscany town. I had been still in school back then, more than ten years ago, and we were on a school trip. Teenagers with Converse sneakers on the old cobblestone slabs, the majestic towers of the ancient place reaching up into the deep blue sky under the bright sun.

Much had happened to me during those ten years. I had seen war, and just recently, I had been turned to be an ever-thirsty creature of the night. I needed to buy sun blocker lotion, since the stuff available in the States didn't block anything. But I had to be able to move during the day without looking like an LSD version of Sunday morning TV cartoon.

The plane finally touched down at Fiumicino airport in Rome, Italy.


	4. Chapter 4

My battle plan was simple: I just had to find out how many of the guards I had to kill before Aro, the apparent head of the Volturi, would ask me to join his guard. Carlisle briefed me with some details which could be useful to me, since he stayed with the _stregoni beneficienti_ for some time during the Renaissance or so. Strange world, I had to admit. Some vampires had special powers; and whatever was mine, not fighting back it was not.

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Me.

Who?

Just die already!

Yes, I had to admit that my mood wasn't so great when I finally reached Volterra in my rental car. The numbers of tourists was moderate, the town kind of empty even. I found the palace, pushed the door open and stand in the opulent Lobby.

"Good morning. My name is not important. I am here to report a crime. I have been attacked, but fortunately, I was able to fend off the fiends by myself. I heard that you guys are a kind of police around here, so I thought you wanted to know. Especially, since the two attackers where part of the show you run here."

The human girl looked at me, her mouth slightly open. I had taken off my sunglasses, my red eyes didn't seem to bother me, but obviously my stance and my words did. Knowing that my arrival in the town hadn't been unnoticed, I was also sure that my words had been heard by the right ears.

Indeed, a vampire appeared and told me to come with him. No idea who he was, but I followed him nevertheless.

Aro, Marcus and Caius, easily identifiable from the painting Carlisle showed me, were assembled in their tower, some other vampires around them.

They watched me, Aro wanted to start to tell me something, but I interrupted him.

"I killed Felix and Jane."

"Oh, these are indeed somber news, but let us have a look at what happened shall we?", reaching out for my hand.

"Please stop that bovine manure. And don't touch me. I got a strong allergy against liars, and the rash wouldn't go away for days!"

Aro seemed not impressed by the slightest, but he didn't say anything.

"The Seattle army has been created to move against the Cullen clan, to destroy them. You let them move on, hoping the Cullen would suffer enough loss that you could harvest their most gifted members. I was part of the recruitment, but I didn't fight. Instead, I protected a young and innocent girl who didn't want to fight neither, and those two bullies you sent still attacked her sadistically. I killed them both, and I have to stress that I am not sorry at all."

Still no reaction. A vampire moved closer to me while I spoke. Something went off his hands, it was almost invisible. Land mines on gravel roads or snipers on roofs are meant to be invisible, so I had to trust my ability to watch out for the invisible in my job. My new vampire senses helped a lot. I likes that more and more.

"So that was all. Thank you for your kind understanding. Okthanksbye."

Saying this, I turned slowly to my left, as if I wanted to leave the room. But before I had finished the first sentence, I made a full turn, leaped forward toward the vampire who had the funky stuff coming from his hands, and when I said "bye", I had his head in my right hand, his body in my left. I dropped the body.

I turned to back to Aro.

"Oh, I almost forgot. Should you bother the Cullen family ever again, I will come back to get more heads."

Then I left the way I came. Nobody seemed to follow me. In the Lobby, the Girl behind the desk greeted me. I drained her, and then left the building. The town was still empty, the sun up there in the sky, but the sunblock worked well. Just a faint glimmer, I could live with that. Running past the window of a shop, I could see my reflection. My eyes were crimson, and the head that I was holding in my right hand looked like a movie prop.

I wanted them to come out, to decimate their numbers even further. But like all the bullies, they kept their tails between their legs when they met real opposition. It was going to be a slow day.

I threw the head in the trunk and drove on. The rural highway winded down to the coast through the beautiful Tuscan landscape, golden fields, green hills and the cypress trees sticking out into the very blue sky here and there. Small, picturesque villages touched the road, before I left the hills and turned on the freeway to the South, to Rome.

I would go there and wait for the things to come. Until now, everything went much smoother than I had hoped. Could I be so lucky?


	5. Chapter 5

"Are you effing killing me," Scipio said, only he did in Italian and he used the real f-word because we weren't in the USA and always could say what we wanted. "Vampires are real?"

"Yes, I could give you a crash course, but time is an issue here. No coffins, no wooden picks, no crucifixes, need to drink blood, we can cross flowing water and you won't believe what happens in the sunlight, and I have a hard time not killing you on the fucking spot because your blood smells like the best thing in the world." There, I did it.

Scipio was my boss in the outfit. We were a special paramilitary police task force to fight such things like terrorists or the mafia and other enemies of the Republic. But we also had been deployed to Kosovo and Afghanistan, and we found plenty of mafia and terrorists there. Scipio was especially fond of me, because I saved his life twice. If I killed him now, he would still owe me one.

"Your eyes look absolutely weird. But why are you not just disappearing? Go somewhere with a good nice blood supply, there are so many places where people die all the time…!"

Scipio understood the situation very quickly. He knew I wouldn't pull that kind of prank on him, wearing contact lenses and holding an ice pack in my hand before shaking his. He almost instantly recognized the off thing, and I could see him going in defense mode the moment I had entered the room.

"There is a problem."

"Villagers with pitchforks after you?"

"I could handle that. Worse, there are other vampires after me, and I need help handling them."

"So you naturally come to me, telling me, by the way, there are vampires, and now we are going van Helsing on them…"

"No, you don't. I do. With the help of some friends. I want you and the others to be in the area when it happens. They won't like any audience, in fact, our existence is a very secret, and they want to stay it this way. I want you to be there, since I want to take the fight to a place as public as possible by avoiding any human victims at all cost. They won't come after you with us present, only if we lose."

"We never lose," he replied automatically.

"Exactly. You need cameras, heavy gear because you will pretend to be on a police exercise, and some flamethrowers because they could really be helpful if shit stats flying your way."

"I like to be used."

"I know, I used to be part of the show. In fact, I think I will be very helpful in the future. We could get rid of that mess in Syria single-handed by killing ever single idiot down there. Believe me, I got some mad skills now."

"Are you asking for a raise?"

"No, just for your help. You will be not in danger, I promise."


End file.
